About Chinese Food and Cooking
Do you know that more than a third of the world's population eat Chinese food daily? Even if it was eaten regularly by some only, Chinese cooking would still be acknowledged as one of the greatest and original cuisines of the world. There is an ever increasing interest in and appreciation of Chinese food in the West. The fact that Chinese restaurants are mushrooming in the West is ample testimony to the variety and quality of Chinese food.
"Have you eaten already?" is a popular greeting among the Chinese.
The culinary appeal of Chinese cooking has taken the Western culture by storm because those who experimented know how good and economical Chinese food can be. They discovered how easy it is to create Chinese dishes in their own kitchen and the joy of eating Chinese food can be experienced regularly rather than as an occasional treat.
The art of Chinese cooking does not, contrary to popular belief, present any real difficulty as you will soon find out at Chinesefood-recipes.com. All the ingredients in Chinese recipes such as bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, water chestnuts and so forth can be readily purchased from most general food stores and supermarkets, and even online!
"Color, aroma and flavor are not the only the key elements in Chinese cooking; nutrition is also a priority."
Chinese food appeals to the majority and its variety of flavors is so cleverly contained in each dish that there is nothing incongruous in the serving of meat and poultry in the same course. Both the cooking and consumption of Chinese food are great culinary experiences. Besides appealing to our taste buds and eyes, food prepared in the Chinese manner is highly nutritious, retaining all its vitamins with quick and minimum cooking.
The reward of cooking Chinese are obvious to anyone who has tasted a well-cooked Sweet and Sour Pork or was sustained by a succulent Chow Mein. Chinesefood-recipes.com has a great selection of free, easy-to-cook and delicious Chinese recipes. Helpful sections such as Ingredients and Cooking tips are available to make your cooking experience easy and fun. Happy cooking!
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) said, "The path to your friend's heart and soul begins from your cooking."
Chinese Cooking Methods
The art of Chinese cooking is not, contrary to popular belief, complicated and difficult. Most Chinese dishes do not require a complex processing and equipment in the kitchen as does one of China's most famous dishes, Peking duck. Simplicity is the key to Chinese cuisine as evidently shown in their various cooking methods. When you have the ingredients, seasonings and marinades ready, you can use one of the following methods to cook in Chinese.
Roasting - Roasting is not family cooking in China, since few Chinese kitchens have facilities for roasting. Only restaurants go much into roasts and Cantonese restaurants excel especially in these. In roasting, raw ingredients are marinated in seasonings before being roasted in an oven or barbecued over direct heat from charcoal fire, with the roast turning slowly round and round. Marinades is added inside and out from time to time so that the skin remains smooth and shiny, instead of rough and flaky, and the meat remains juicy instead of powdery. The Peking duck is one of China's most famous dishes cooked this way. Families can go to food shops to buy roast meat or poultry and eat it cold. But for the crisp juicy hot roast duck, one has to go to a restaurant.
Boiling - Strictly speaking, this means cooking food in boiling water (A liquid is boiling when the surface is continually agitated by large bubbles). Violent boiling should be avoided. It wastes fuel; it does not cook the food any faster, it tends to make the food break up and so spoils the appearance; the liquid is evaporated too quickly with the consequent danger of the food burning. There are one or two exceptions to this rule; for example, when one wants to drive off water quickly from syrup or a sauce to make it thicker, then violent boiling with the lid off hastens the process.
In Chinese cooking, there is very little big-fire boiling, as a complete process. Chinese would not consider eating boiled potatoes. After a thing is boiled, the natural question is - Now what of it? Quick plain boiling is often only a preparatory process for other ways of cooking - where the term parboil comes into place. There are some exceptions, such as plain boiled celery cabbage with salt and a little lard, or boiled yam, to eat with sugar. But celery cabbage and yam are such cook-proof things that they are good in any method prepared. It's not necessary to use continued big fire after water has started to boil, because water cannot be hotter than 100° C or 212°F.
Turn the fire to medium if you want but to make sure that it is at least hot in all parts, especially in a large tall boiling or steaming pot, the fire must be big enough for you to see the steam come out.
Shallow frying - shallow frying uses a small amount of oil in a frying pan or wok at a temperature lower than stir-frying. Ingredients are usually cut into slices or flat pieces, and are used as they are, slightly coated with batter or rubbed with seasonings. Fish is ideal for this cooking method. The presentation side of the food should be fried first as this side will have the better appearance because the oil is clean, then turned so that both sides are cooked and browned. Sauces, if called for, are then added. Food cooked this way is tender inside with some crispness outside. This method is quite similar to sautéing in the West.
Stewing is a time-honored moist cooking technique that transforms less tender cuts of meat unsuitable for quick-cooking methods into melt-in-your-mouth meats. Stewing allows the cook to assemble the dish, boil it and then let it simmer, with little or no attention for an hour or more. A stew usually has smaller pieces of food that may or may not be browned first, and calls for a large quantity of liquid (enough to cover the food). Many "crock-pot" dishes are essentially stewed. Stews can be frozen and their flavors mature as they stand, so they are even better a day or so after you cook them. Vary the flavor profile of the stew dish by experimenting with seasonings (wine, broth, beer and vegetable juices) and different herbs and spices. In the final step, the sauce is thickened either with cornstarch or reduced by simmering. Cuts ideal for stewing are shoulder and pork cubes. In China, stews are usually cooked in a clay pot over a charcoal fire. The stew is cooked for a very long time, producing meat almost jelly-like in tenderness. Yummy! One variation of stewing is red-cooking.
Tips : Hard boiling a stew will render the food tough and chewy.
Red-cooking is stewing with soy sauce; some ingredients needing pre-frying, some not, imparting a reddish tinge to the final product - is a popular cooking technique in eastern China because there is where the finest soy sauce is produced in the China. In the final stage, the food is simmered over high or low heat till the sauce is reduced. Red-cooking is the typical family cooking. Red cooking has the advantage common to slow-cooking dishes that the leftovers keep well and can be eaten cold or warmed over. Cold red-cooked jelly of meat, chicken, etc., is especially good. If you are careful to warm it just to boiling point each time after use, the pot can keep for nearly two weeks!
Chinese Cooking Methods - Steaming
Steaming is a traditional Chinese cooking method that is ideal for today's trend towards healthy eating as very little or no oil is used. Steaming also results in a more nutritious food than boiling because fewer nutrients are destroyed or leached away into the water. It's simple and yet able to enhance an ingredient's natural flavor. Steaming is a test of the quality of the raw ingredient and therefore a favorite method of cooking very fresh fish by the Chinese. All sorts of foods are steamed: meats, dumplings, vegetables and buns and the fresher the ingredients, the better they are for steaming. The Chinese sometimes steam their food plain such as ham or beaten eggs with only salt and water.
There are several ways to steam food at home. The ingredients e.g. fish, slices of ginger, cabbages, seasonings and water are mixed and arranged in a bowl or plate, and then it is placed on a rack in a large pot or wok of boiling water with the lid on. The water is kept one inch below to prevent over boiling into the steamed bowl. Sometimes no water need to be added to the steamed bowl and the natural juice and condensed steam will give just enough juice. For best results, the water should be boiling and not cold when the food goes into the steamer and the flame should be high enough to keep it boiling. One tip I can offer is to have a thermo flask of hot water nearby for refill as the water evaporates during cooking.
Another steaming variation by the Chinese is called 'double boiling'. To double-boil, the bowl or casserole of ingredients is half immersed in water inside a large pot which is covered by a lid and the food is cooked partly by the boiling water and partly by the steam it produces. Food steamed this way comes out very soft, tender and nutritious.
Many forms of dim sum, dumplings and pastries are steamed dry. The Chinese use bamboo steamers that stack one on top of each other, up to as high as five layers. The bottom of each basket is a grid which allows the steam from the wok to rise all the way to the top of the stack. Dishes needing the most steaming are placed on the bottom, with ones needing less on the top level. Cantonese are well known for their steamed dishes. The bamboo steamers are not suitable if you wish to retain the precious sweet juices that ooze out of the food to be steamed because they will drip away through the grids unless of course if the steamers are big enough for you to put a whole plate in.
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There are aluminum or stainless steel stacked steamers available in the market. To some Chinese, this is an indispensable piece of equipment and priced very reasonably too. The bottom section is a pot that holds water for steaming and on top of it is stacked with one or two pots with perforated bottom to allow steam to pass through from the boiling water below. It also comes with a lid too. Stacked steamers are large enough so that a whole fish in a plate can fit in with enough room left on its sides to allow the steam to rise through.
You can also improvise a simple make-shift steamer : place a small bowl upside down or a metal can in a pot filled with water with a lid and balance the dish holding the food on it and you're on your way to making a healthful meal.
Compared with food cooked by other methods, steamed dishes are more subtle in taste. Not only steaming retains the taste of the ingredients, but also its vitamins and nutrients. Steamed food is particularly favored by the middle-ages.
Clear-simmering differs from red-cooking in several ways. It is clear because no soy sauce is used. Secondly, it is less dry and the slow cooking yields clear soup to serve as drink at the table. Except a few developed dried vegetables such as dried winter mushrooms, most clear-simmered dishes are meat and fish dishes. As soon as boiling starts, very low fire should be used. Any continued quick boiling will make the soup muddy and uninviting. Good Chinese cooks are proud of good clear-simmering, but ordinary cooks hesitate to clear-simmer, since it demands too much quantity, quality, and time. A practical advantage about a clear-simmered dish is that it combines the part of a main dish and that of a soup.
